NEC will build a datacentre in China

Japanese equipment vendor NEC this week signed a memorandum of understanding with Chongqing City, one of China’s four national central cities, with a view to forming a strategic partnership in the smart city and cloud service areas.

Chongqing is a major city in Southwest China with a population of 28.8 million and aims to shift its status from an industrial-oriented economy to a communications industry hub.

Under the partnership, NEC and Chongqing “will create an ecosystem of human resources for the development of IT, cutting-edge technologies, products and services for local, national and global markets,” providing cloud services that support social infrastructure and smart city projects, as well as contributing to the city’s industrial development with information and communication technologies.

NEC also said it regards Chongqing as a strategic base for its business in China and will establish a local subsidiary focused on cloud business as well as build a data centre supporting cloud service platforms.

As well as developing the human resources requirements for the cloud industry and technical certification, NEC will establish a laboratory for the development of cloud service applications for government, traffic, disaster prevention, energy, medical system and agricultural uses, in addition to the development of cloud computing technologies.

Unicom said that it improved smartphone quality to price ratio in 2012

Chinese operator China Unicom has announced a 92 per cent year on year increase in mobile data usage, attributing the growth in part to the availability of low-cost smarpthones. In an earnings release posted late last week, Unicom referenced an improvement in its smartphone “quality to price ratio”.

The firm recorded a 19 per cent increase in full-year revenue for 2012 to reach RMB248.9bn ($40bn), while profit for the year grew 67.9 per cent to RMB7.1bn.

Chang Xiaobing, chairman and CEO at the operator, said that over the year China Unicom was the fastest growing operator in the country, in terms of revenue.

“Its market share further increased, its business structure further improved, and its profitability showed significant improvement,” he said.

The operator had 76.5 million subscribers by the end of 2012, seeing net additions of 36.4 million over the course of the year.

3G service revenue grew by a sizeable 82.6 per cent year-on-year, to reach RMB59.8bn.

The total number of GSM subscribers also grew by two per cent to 162.9 million, although GSM service revenue decreased by 6.1 per cent year on year to RMB66.24bn. The operator said this decline in revenue was due to the decrease in voice and SMS revenues.

“Look, I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but something big is about to happen in China,” he said. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Yes, sure,” I replied.

“Well, this really is top secret, but the deal is almost done so it can’t do much harm now,” he said. “Virgin Mobile is going to launch as an MVNO in Shanghai. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

That was way back on Oct. 11, 2003 and Virgin Mobile never did get to launch as an MVNO in China – and nor did anyone else for that matter.

MIIT green-lights MVNOs
In the years since that boozy exchange took place, I never thought much about MVNOs entering China until last week – nearly a decade later – when reports claimed that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) was finally considering allowing them into the market.

The reports claimed that proposed MVNO trials would take place over two years, with mobile operators having to take on at least two MVNOs each, though MVNOs would be restricted to domestic companies only.

The MVNO trials are the latest attempt by the MIIT to bring greater private investment and more competition to the telecoms market. But, as is always the case with China, there are plenty more questions than answers.

For example, will the MIIT be involved in setting wholesale prices between operators and MVNOs? If not, what will the MIIT do if operators play hardball and don’t strike reasonable deals with MVNOs? There is little point allowing MVNOs into the market if operators don’t offer them viable wholesale prices.

In addition, how will the MIIT ensure a proper distribution of MVNOs? Potential MVNOs will be champing at the bit to get into wealthy markets, such as Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guanzhou. But how will the MIIT persuade them to launch services in the less attractive western provinces far from the prosperous eastern seaboard?

Never a good time for more competition
Being frank about it, from a mobile operator perspective there is rarely going to be a good time to allow MVNOs into the market, and the Chinese market is no different.

Although the entry of MVNOs seems at first to be bad news for mobile operators, they will have to try to make their choice of MVNO partners a strategic plus. But this in itself brings a tough choice.

Chinese mobile operators could easily take the safe route and choose any number of major local retailers as MVNO partners, especially electronics retailers with whom they already have commercial relationships in the device market. And these retailers don’t really bring any new magic to the table.

Where operators’ real problems exist is in the content-and-applications market, where they are – like their counterparts in Western markets – facing the rising threat of OTT players, which are chipping away at their messaging revenues and will be an increasing drain on their voice revenues too.

Major Chinese OTT player Tencent – which runs popular messaging services such as QQ and WeChat – has already been strongly linked with a possible move into the mobile market as an MVNO, while Web giant Baidu also has grounds for MVNO aspirations, given its well-publicized desire to increase its presence in the mobile market.

What’s to gain and lose?
The bottom line, then, is simple: What do the mobile operators get out of bringing the OTT players into the tent as MVNOs? And what do the OTT players get by leaving their comfortable spot free-riding on telecoms networks and becoming service providers themselves?

From a mobile-operator perspective, inviting OTT players into the market seems counterintuitive but also gives smaller operators, such as China Unicom and China Telecom, a useful point of differentiation with market giant China Mobile by bringing these brands onto their underused networks as MVNOs.

Although China’s mobile operators have had their successes in the content market – just look at how China Mobile-owned Wireless Music Base is generating over US$3 billion a year from music downloads – there are clouds above their heads.

There is little doubt that the OTT players, ranging from Tencent’s messaging services – WeChat already has 300 million users – to the OTT video offered by Tudou-Youku, have become a force to be reckoned with, especially among younger users.

From an operator perspective, bringing the OTT players into the tent as MVNOs could be a good way to start building long-term relationships with them – after all, these guys aren’t going away anytime soon – and to look for ways to leverage the pulling power they bring.

For the OTT players, entering the market as MVNOs might seem at first glance to be a case of the poacher turning gatekeeper. But the truth is that the OTT players are not generating money directly from their users but from advertisers, and that is an increasingly tough market, given the number of OTT players fighting for ad spend.

Having the ability to launch as MVNOs finally gives the OTT players the ability to directly monetize their relationships with subscribers for the first time without necessarily charging for their currently free OTT services.

In addition, getting into the market as MVNOs would give the OTT players a chance to finally consider charging for some of their premium services, because they could – for the first time – really be able to guarantee quality of service to users, something that would be of particular use for video-based services.

There might still be a long way to go before we see MVNOs enter China – rushed and reckless policy making is something the MIIT can seldom be accused of – but if operators and OTT players can get over their mutual distrust, this development could ultimately benefit both parties.

Apple has started offering instalment plans for its products in China

In a bid to compete with its smartphone rivals in the largest mobile market in the world, Apple has started offering instalment plans for its products in China, the first OEM in the country to do so when selling its own products directly. According to reports, the company has taken this step because it has been struggling to shift its products, which are typically more expensive than those of its competitors. Regardless of  the near-term competitive environment Apple faces in China the instalment plans are a bold and innovative way for Apple to make the iPhone more attractive to consumers who are used to buying smartphones from local rivals such as ZTE for much less.

In fact, the iPhone is already available on instalments from third-party websites in China; the difference with Apple’s own scheme is that it is offering longer repayment terms (18 or 24 months along with the three, six and 12-month terms available elsewhere). In addition, the interest rates it charges in China are lower than in other countries; customers opting for a repayment term of 18 months pay 6.5 per cent in interest, and 8.5 per cent for a 24-month term, compared with 14.9 per cent in the UK. Until the end of January, the shorter plans charge no interest.

Financing plans have been growing more popular in mature markets over the past two years, but have typically been used by operators as a way around the subsidy model, which is growing increasingly expensive as more and more consumers shift from prepaid to postpaid. Informa has noted, however, that device platform owners – such as Apple – can use financing to disrupt traditional device distribution models. If customers grow more accustomed to buying handsets from OEMs, operators will see their role – and bargaining power – erode as they are no longer the de facto one-stop shop for handsets as well as service contracts.

Given Apple’s record of innovation in hardware and software design, it’s perhaps not surprising that it should now turn to financing to try and take share in China in the mid-to-high end segments of the markets it operates in. While the size of the Chinese market represents huge opportunity for Apple – more than its rivals who have been in the market for longer – the unique and complex nature of the market will test its ability to tailor its products to a new and, for it, largely untapped market. In this context, the financing move means differentiation for Apple’s devices as well as increasing its competitive positioning.

That said, it is still too early to draw too many conclusions from Apple’s decision. Instalments are a response to the company’s unique situation in China, where Apple lies in sixth place among handset manufacturers, a ranking that will not trouble the vendor in terms of the overall market, but which it won’t want to maintain in the smartphone segment. The size of the potential customer base – even without an agreement with market leader China Mobile, which accounts for around 65 per cent of subscribers – will make China Apple’s largest market, so it must find a way to remain competitive there. However, any lessons learned from its experiences in the world’s most populous country will surely help Apple in promoting the model in more mature markets. While Apple’s market share is under threat from increasingly competitive rivals, this latest financing move could be an opportunity for it to boost sales of its devices not just in China, but globally.

Chinese OTT player Tencent—which runs popular messaging services such as QQ and WeChat —has already been strongly tipped as an MVNO

It’s no secret that consumer focused network operators are facing a real dilemma in the content and applications market thanks to the rising threat of OTT services chipping away at messaging revenues and posing an increasing drain on voice as well.

So it was interesting this week to hear that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has issued a draft proposal considering the introduction of MVNOs to the market. The thing here is that Chinese OTT players are firmly in the frame for local MVNO status, not least because they give the smaller operators, China Unicom and China Telecom (smaller in Chinese terms, at least), the ability to differentiate from clear leader China Mobile. But also because they have some considerable pulling power themselves.

The proposed MVNO trials would take place over two years, with mobile operators having to take on at least two MVNOs each, and the pilot would be restricted to domestic companies only. China represents an attractive market for domestic and foreign brands alike, mainly because of its sheer size (there are over a billion mobile subscribers in China) but also because of the diversity of its cultural demographic, with a luxury audience similar in size to that of Western Europe.

According to my colleague at Informa, Asia Pac analyst Tony Brown, Chinese OTT player Tencent—which runs popular messaging services such as QQ and WeChat —has already been strongly tipped as an MVNO, while search giant Baidu has similar aspirations. WeChat already has 300 million users, and it’s noted that achieving MVNO status would give the company chance to test out premium offerings, based on its ability to properly guarantee quality of service.

And while the domestic market is attractive, Chinese content and apps firms are also keen to expand their presence overseas—Orange has just signed an exclusive partnership with Baidu to bring mobile web apps to customers in the Middle East and Africa—the first time Baidu has signed such an agreement with a global operator. But MVNOs offer a ripe channel to facilitate this move in any market, especially in countries where foreign investment has traditionally been difficult. Take for example the Middle East: Saudi Arabia’s telecoms regulator has just this week confirmed it will invite applications from companies for a possible three MVNO licences.

The authority favours opening up the market to MVNOs, rather than new network operators, as it avoids the need for further spectrum or new radio access networks. However, this model also gives operators the chance to make money from OTT players by selling them wholesale capacity, as well as forming (exclusive) partnerships to leverage their pulling power, which surely counters the argument many operators have about OTT not paying its way.

The growing number of apps and tools for communication means that SMS over cellular has for some time now not been the only, or even cheapest, option for customers to message one another. In March 2012 WhatsApp announced that it had hit the two billion messages per day volume worldwide, just five months after reaching the one billion mark.

Clearly, a partnership with these players can introduce significant benefits for both parties, whereas an operator blocking or throttling such services would likely run into issues maintaining customer loyalty after depriving users of their favourite services. But still operators in Western Europe are looking to initiatives like Joyn to help build viable alternatives to the likes of Skype and WhatsApp.

I’m sure such partnerships as Joyn have their merits, but they will always be going up against well established alternatives. Is it possible that in the near future, we will see most innovation in the OTT space coming out of China? And when I say coming out, I mean into other markets.

Last summer China Telecom launched its long-awaited UK MVNO aimed at Chinese residents, as well as students and tourists. China Telecom was the first Chinese operator to launch an overseas MVNO, and has a potential market of around 500,000 customers of Chinese descent in the UK, in addition to the estimated one million Chinese tourists who visit each year. The UK is just China Telecom’s first stop in launching MVNO services throughout Western Europe and the rest of the world and is interesting in that it is leading the charge of ethnic MVNOs that target a specific community, rather than generalist audiences.

China could well show the rest of the world how it’s done when it comes to monetisation of OTT services.

The country has a luxury market the size of Western Europe as well as a huge number of lower income earners. But in a bid to encourage direct foreign investment, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has issued a draft proposal to allow MVNOs to set up in the market for the first time.

The MIIT is currently in consultation with the industry’s stakeholders, including the three mobile network operators – China Unicom, China Mobile and China Telecom – with a view to launching a two-year trial which would see each operator mandated to sign up at least two MVNOs to run on their network.

Before long, junctions on the high street will be populated by marketers handing out free SIMs to Western ex-pats, promising them cheap calls home.

Carrie Pawsey, senior analyst at Ovum, expects that China Unicom and China Mobile won’t be very open to the idea. “They would probably prefer to keep wholesale players out of the market, but we could see some interest from China Telecom for a number of reasons,” she said. And who wouldn’t like to get their hands on some of those customers? “It’s a massive opportunity in terms of the size of the market, and it is also very heavily prepaid: 70 per cent of subscribers are prepaid and most MVNOs tend to go with a prepaid offering, rather than postpaid, so it’s an attractive market from that perspective,” she said.

Apple clearly has designs on the market. Boss man Tim Cook was in China this week, meeting with government officials, business partners, Apple employees and customers, including China Mobile CEO Xi Guohua, who isn’t technically a customer. Yet.

The meet threw more fuel on the rumours that Apple is looking to bring a version or versions of the iPhone to China Mobile and its 720 million subscribers, perhaps catering to both the high and low ends of the market.

In fact, during an interview with China’s official Xinhua news agency, Cook said that he expects the country to eventually replace the US as Apple’s biggest customer. Getting access to a target audience of three quarters of a billion people would certainly help that prediction come true.

In a similar vein, Chinese manufacturers are looking to the handset space to bolster their own presence overseas. With both firms facing resistance in the US to their network infrastructure businesses, Huawei and ZTE unveiled high-end smartphones at CES in Las Vegas this week.

In October last year, a US House Intelligence Committee report warned operators that the companies pose a threat to the country’s national security, effectively blacklisting them from network infrastructure contracts. But David Dai Shu, ZTE’s director of global public affairs, told Telecoms.com that this would only have a minimal impact on ZTE’s business in the US because out of around $400m in revenue generated in the country last year, only around $30m was from infrastructure.

ZTE’s Grand S, unveiled at CES, is a high-end handset running Google’s Android Jelly Bean OS and powered by a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor. Conversely to Apple, ZTE has set its sights on the US to lead adoption of the device, given that the US controls the core part of the product, referring to the device’s Qualcomm chip and Google’s software.

Domestic rival Huawei meanwhile unveiled its first Windows Phone 8 smartphone at the show — the Huawei Ascend W1, also powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor.

CES is always a bubble of innovation, and this year Las Vegas played host to several connected car manufacturers eager to show off their wares.

Toyota demoed its autonomous driving tech through its high-end Lexus brand, including the Lexus LS model, which Toyota claims is equipped with the world’s most advanced pre-collision safety system. The Informer doesn’t really understand that. You’re safe pre-collision anyway, aren’t you?

Meanwhile Ford showcased its in-car integration of the Android app Kaliki, which curates the top news stories from major newspapers and magazines and provides an audio version for on-demand playback in the vehicle. Apparently the service’s unique selling point is the fact the firm employs professionals to read every story, making the content “pleasing to the ear”. Has so much time passed that dodgy pre-bubble era internet startup business models have become retro chic?

Troubled Canadian vendor Research In Motion (RIM) was trying to maintain its relevance in the industry through an appearance with Bentley, showing off QNX, the software subsidiary it bought in 2010, by focusing on connected cars.

Version 2.0 of the QNX Car development platform, which launched at the show, has apparently slashed the development effort of one company down to 14 months from three years. The operating system popped up in a concept car based on a Bentley Continental GT convertible featuring speech recognition technology from AT&T called ‘Watson’. Just say “Hello Bentley,” and the car’s voice recognition system starts interacting in a distinctly British accent. Elementary.

One of the perennial issues with machine to machine in the consumer space is getting all these devices to get along with each other. Technology provider for the media and entertainment sectors, Technicolor, reckons it has developed a software framework to allow connected devices, regardless of brand or ecosystem, to “speak the same language”.

The firm launched Qeo software modules to address the problem of disparate ecosystems used for device interaction, allowing devices, applications and over-the-top cloud solutions to speak to one another and deliver simple and richer media services.

Along these lines, chipmaker Nvidia announced Project Shield, a dedicated portable gaming device, running on the Android platform, which comes wifi-enabled and LTE ready and plays both Android and PC titles; giving access to any game on Google Play and streaming games from the Steam library any PC that is powered by Nvidia GeForce GTX GPUs. On a side note, Steam owner Valve was showing off its own console, or ‘PC in a box’, codenamed Bigfoot’ which aims to drive usage by guaranteeing compatibility for games.

On the subject of streaming content, it’s becoming a cliché in TV land that content-rights restrictions, and not technology, are slowing the pace of industry development. At CES, Boxee and Dish demonstrated workarounds that have allowed them to offer two products frequently blocked by rights issues; namely cloud-based DVRs and out-of-home live TV viewing.

Network DVRs have kept many a media lawyer in business over the last decade, but Boxee’s Cloud DVR provides a nice workaround. When users chose to record a show using the Boxee DVR, the content is pulled down to the Boxee box, transcoded in the box and sent back up the user’s broadband network to be stored in the cloud. This avoids the issue that has stymied many a network DVR, namely that copies of the content are made and stored before they hit the consumer’s set-top box.

Dish’s latest iteration of its Hopper whole-home DVR will cause similar legal pondering. The company has added a version of the Hopper integrated with Echostar’s Sling technology which takes a user’s live and DVR content and transfers it to their iOS – and soon Android – devices, wherever they are, inside or outside the home.

Online giant Amazon is also looking to tackle the content rights issue, in the US at least, with a provocatively-named offering, AutoRip, which stores digital versions of physical CDs bought via its store in a cloud storage account.

Customers will be able to access the stored music via Amazon’s Cloud Player on the web or via tablet and smartphone apps.

Also looking for a loophole is the US gambling community, which is constantly running into trouble with complex US laws that prevent businesses from knowingly accepting money transfers for internet gambling purposes. Digital currency Bitcoin is being heralded as a solution, because it’s a decentralised peer to peer transfer technology, those involved can avoid using US banks.

Bitcoin has attracted both good and bad press and falls into grey areas of legislation in many cases. A researcher called GamblingCompliance estimates the value of the US online gambling market at between $4bn and $6bn, and when the government cracked down on online gambling sites in 2011, gamblers in the US had more than $100m in online accounts frozen. The government is still working on reimbursements now. One of the reasons Bitcoin is appealing in this case is because the coins are actually stored on the user’s own computer, making it incredibly difficult for the Feds to seize it.

Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, also attracted the ire of the US government this week, after he embarked on a somewhat enigmatic trip to North Korea. It’s not clear what the withdrawn country, or Schmidt for that matter, hoped to achieve, but the web is now not short of photographs of the Google exec visiting the visit the nation’s computer labs and perhaps giving Kim Jong Un ammunition to show that he is moving his country forward.

The same cannot be said of India, apparently, which has had its spectrum policy labelled “a complete shambles” by an analyst with experience of dealing with licensing auctions in India in the past.

The comment comes as the Indian government is understood to be looking to cut reserve prices by up to 50 per cent in its second attempt in recent months to auction off CDMA radio spectrum, after all potential bidders pulled out of an auction in November last year, claiming that the reserve price had been set too high.

The re-auction was forced after the Supreme Court of India cancelled all licences allocated in the initial 2G auction in 2008, due to allegations of corruption.

“The government views the telecoms sector as a cash cow,” said Stefan Zehle, CEO at consultancy firm Coleago. “This goes back to the 3G auction, where they arranged the auction in such a way that there would be a significant excess of demand over supply by not making all of the 2.1GHz 3G spectrum available. So in India, some of the world’s highest prices were paid and there still wasn’t enough spectrum.

“It’s a shocking state of affairs and I find it amazing how such an important sector which could do so much for India, how in such a deliberate and wilful way the government is hell-bent on destroying it as much as they can, and in a way that is manifestly unfair to foreign investors.”

Causing trouble in the US meanwhile, was US satellite player Dish Networks, which is aiming to scupper a potential deal between national mobile operator Sprint and Wimax operator Clearwire by making a bid for the latter at $3.30 per share, a higher price than the $2.97 offered by Sprint.

Sprint looked close to sealing the acquisition of the Wimax player; after it gained ownership of a 50 per cent stake in the firm and made a bid of $2.2bn for the remaining shares. The firm still believes its own agreement to acquire Clearwire is superior to the highly conditional Dish proposal.

And that’s about it for this week,

Take care

The Informer

The Chinese governments wants all new properties to be equipped with fibre connectivity

The Chinese government is to make fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connectivity mandatory for all domestic new-build residences. The country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will introduce the legislation from April 1, 2013 according to local reports.

The policy will only apply to regions of the country where a public fibre-optic telecom network is available, according to Chinese newspaper China Daily, and residence owners will be offered services from a variety of ISPs, in order to ensure customer choice.

China’s government hopes to have 40 million families connected to fibre networks by 2015 according to a report in another Chinese national newspaper, Economic Information Daily.

The news follows forecasts from research firm Ovum that smart grids based on passive optical networking (PON) technologies are set to provide a $1.5-2bn opportunity for fibre and FTTx component and infrastructure vendors targeting China.

The construction of PON-based smart grids would enable fibre connectivity to residences in China. A major driver is expected to be the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) which is pursuing a smart grid project that could also be part of a plan to become a communications service provider. Ovum believes such projects would also benefit optical line termination (OLT) equipment vendors, optical network terminal (ONT) box manufacturers, component vendors and cabling manufacturers operating in China.

Smart grids pose a big opportunity

Smart grids based on passive optical networking (PON) technologies are set to provide a $1.5-2bn opportunity for fibre and FTTx component and infrastructure vendors targeting China, according to statistics released Wednesday.

Forecasts from industry researcher Ovum suggest that a large opportunity exists in China, where the deployment of a PON-based smart grid would benefit OLT (optical line termination) equipment vendors such as Huawei, ZTE, Alcatel-Lucent, and FiberHome, along with the ONT (optical network terminal) box manufacturers and component vendors supplying fibre splitters, transceivers, BOSAs, PON MAC chips, and optical interface chips as well as cabling manufacturers, such as Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable (YOFC), Corning, and Prysmian.

A major driver is expected to be the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) which is pursuing a smart grid project that could also be part of a plan to become a communications service provider.

Julie Kunstler, Principal Analyst of Components at Ovum, believes that the ultimate goal of a fibre-based smart grid is to support advanced communications services. “Building a fibre-based smart grid communications network creates a very large market opportunity for PON vendors.

“This potential market is important, as Ovum forecasts declining PON OLT port shipments beginning in 2013, following major FTTx network buildouts in China,” said Kunstler. And while it is still early to predict the likelihood of the SGCC opportunity, several PON communications equipment vendors have developed products that meet smart grid requirements along with triple-play communications services.

Consequently, Kunstler’s recommendation to equipment vendors is to stay close to SGCC to understand its smart grid plans in China. “The cost pressures are likely to be brutal and vendors should continue to look for ways to reduce BOM (bill of material).”

China is by far Google's largest market for Android devices, according to Informa

Almost two-thirds of the handsets sold in China in 2012 run on the Android OS and China is Google’s largest market for Android devices, according to the latest research from Informa Telecoms & Media. A third of Android handsets sold in 2012 were sold in China, figures from the research firm show.

The country is by far the fastest-growing smartphone market with a year-on-year growth of 85 per cent in 2012 and this growth is being driven by the explosive demand for Android phones.  Of the other major mobile platforms, Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft’s Windows Phone hold minority shares of China’s total handset sales, with around five per cent and one per cent, respectively.

The US is the second-largest market for Android with an 11 per cent of devices sold share. Informa’s research anticipates that at least one in every two mobile phones sold in the US in 2013 will be powered by the platform.

“Despite the economic downturn, the global smartphone market is enjoying healthy growth and consumers are actually spending more to acquire more technologically-advanced devices,” said Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.

He added that it is estimated that around 786 million smartphone devices were sold in 2012, which is 45 per cent more than the total number of smartphones sold in 2011.

“Looking forward, Android is expected to continue gaining market share globally and, by 2015, one in every two handsets sold worldwide will be powered by it,” added Saadi. “However, according to Informa Telecoms & Media, the market share of this platform could potentially peak – or even decline – after 2016 owing to a more aggressive penetration of the alternative OSs, most notably Windows Phone.”

Chinese train users will be able to enjoy LTE on certain routes

China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier, has created the fastest TD-LTE network in the world – by deploying the network along a high-speed train line.

According to the China Daily website, China Mobile has connected up a 60-kilometre stretch of the Jiaxing section of the Shanghai to Hangzhou high-speed railway to TD-LTE using 18 base stations, and is capable of delivering 15Mbps at speeds of 300 kilometres per hour.

The aim is to cater for business people, enabling them to download and upload webpages, images and video while commuting.

China Mobile has previous experience of deploying LTE in unusual places and has provided download speeds of up to 40Mbps to a Hangzhou subway station.

The carrier is due to launch a TD-LTE network in Hong Kong on 18 December, in advance of a larger scale role out across mainland China.  It has also unveiled a mobile TV service in Hong Kong, which it hopes will increase revenue through increased data traffic.

China Mobile has more than 743 million subscribers, according to the latest WCIS Informa stats.